ANYA’S GHOST by Vera Brosgol (First Second Books, 2011)
This beautifully illustrated graphic novel tells the tale of a frustrated teenage girl from a Russian family who is desperate to fit in with the cool set at her high school in America. Part of the story is autobiographical since Vera Brosgol was born in Moscow (in 1984) and now lives in Portland, Oregon.
Anya is self-conscious about her accent, her weight and the fact that she doesn’t measure up to the Barbie-like beauties in her class. To make matters worse the boy she has a crush on hardly seems to notice her.
Her troubled life turns around when, on the way home from school, she takes a short cut through a cemetery and falls down a hole in a nearby forest. Instead of finding white rabbits or Cheshire cats she discovers the skeleton of a girl named Emily who died 90 years previously. She knows this because the girl’s ghost tells her so! Continue reading
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